Two climate activists were sentenced to youth arrest on Tuesday because of a protest by the Swabian government. District judge Sandra Mayer imposed a three-week arrest on a 20-year-old man, against whom several criminal proceedings had already been conducted in the past, and a 21-year-old woman was arrested for a week.
The auxiliary services and instructions imposed in the previous proceedings had brought nothing, said the juvenile judge. Due to a lack of personal maturity, Mayer applied juvenile and not adult criminal law to both adolescents. According to the indictment, the accused occupied the district government in Augsburg in October 2022 in protest against a permit in connection with forest clearing and insulted the then district president as corrupt. Accordingly, they were convicted of trespassing and defamation of political figures. The two climate activists were originally supposed to appear at the trial in mid-June, but were absent without an excuse. The court then issued an arrest warrant for the two.
The judge described the accused, who came from the Ravensburg area, as “privileged children of wealth” whose aim was to attract as much attention as possible. In the meantime, they have also attacked the judiciary and the police on a personal level. “That no longer has anything to do with lofty goals.” Mayer recommended that the accused take up studies so that they could later fight climate change with meaningful work.